There was a time when it was believed that inappropriate or illegal sexual relations could ruin the hopes of anyone seeking the highest office in the United States of America. Somehow, this belief survived 1992 and seemed to remain unchanged until 2016, when it was dispelled forever.
Looking back over storied American history, however, it seems that presidential sex scandals are actually a tradition only slightly younger than the office itself, and that the only candidates or elected officials on whom they seem to have had the intended effect were the potential 1988 Democratic nominee. Gary Hart and former 2012 Republican nominee Herman Cain . Let's think about some of the most infamous presidential sex scandals in American history...
10. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings
Along with writing the Declaration of Independence, authorizing the Lewis and Clark expedition, and serving as an officer during the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson is best remembered for forcing his slave Sally Hemmings to bear him children. This became public knowledge during Jefferson's presidency and was first published in Richmond Recorder September 1, 1802. Interestingly, there is some evidence that no less than the obnoxious and unloved first vice president/second president John Adams spilled the beans, as the first known reference to Sally Hemmings' crime appears to be a 1794 letter he wrote to his son Charles Adams. Adams referred to her both as "Dashing Sally" and "Egeria in the groves," the latter of which was a reference to a nymph who the ancient Roman writer Ovid claimed had cohabited with Numa, the first king of Rome (when it was just a modest city-state).
The issue was still being actively debated in 1874, when Thomas Jefferson's nephew Peter Carr was quoted in " The Lives of Thomas Jefferson" and said Jefferson had admitted to fathering at least one, if not six, of Hemmings' children. It wasn't until 1998 that DNA tests confirmed that the Hemmings/Jefferson families were interbred, and in 2000, a Monticello spokesman made a public statement acknowledging that the claim was valid. In 2018, the New York Times reported that Monticello had included Hemmings in its historical presentations of the Founding Father.
9. John Quincy Adams and Tsar Nicholas I
The first son of a former president elected to the presidency, Adams may have been involved in one of the most unusual sex scandals in history. He may be the only president whose sex scandal involved facilitating an affair rather than starting one himself. In 1828, reports began circulating that Adams had sold one of his housekeepers Tsar Nicholas I as a sex slave to gain the favor of the head of state, the plausibility of which came from the fact that Adams was the first US Ambassador in Russia.
The story was taken from newspapers that were almost certainly loyal to Adams' rival, Andrew Jackson. However, according to Robert Mackenzie's 2021 book "We, fallen people, "Not only was the charge widely believed, but Adams knew he was being vilified, complaining in his diary of how people were inclined to believe it because of their desire to "give in to their passions." Although Adams' supporters were prepared to vilify Jackson with the same viciousness, Old Hickory wrested the White House from the alleged pimp that same year.
8. John Tyler and...well, numerous slaves
There were some funny oddities that were noted during the presidency of this almost forgotten president from 1840 to 1844. Have you heard about how William Henry Harrison lasted barely a month in office before he died? Yes, it was the vice president who took over the vacant seat, so , he became the first unelected president America . As a bipartisan candidate, he was so opposed to the Whigs, his own party, that he vetoed many bills that passed both houses of Congress, such as the creation of a federal bank and the tariff system, that his cabinet nearly all quit and members of his own party nearly impeached him. Such issues seemed to obscure the fact that important events such as the annexation of Texas occurred during his presidency.
As a slave owner when the Whig Party was largely abolitionist, a scandal erupted when a newspaper Emancipator an article was published that he had a Jeffersonian penchant for sex with his slaves. That would certainly fit with his libido, which saw him father eight children with his first wife and seven with his second, who was thirty years his junior and gave birth to his last child when the former president was 70. years . The Official Newspaper of Tyler Madisonian vehemently denied the allegations at the time, and as of 2017, no DNA tests have been conducted to confirm that any of Tyler's slaves fathered an illegitimate child with him. Although Tyler did not seek re-election, it seems he did enough to alienate so many people that the sex scandal can hardly be blamed or attributed to it.
6. James Buchanan and William King
Long known as America's only bachelor president, this led to much speculation about him for more than a decade before his inauguration in 1856. In 1844, open letters from his political opponents were published that mentioned Buchanan's "better half," a U.S. senator from Alabama William Rufus King The couple first met in 1830 as members of the Democratic Party and were supposed to be lifelong bachelors, although Buchanan had a fiancé who probably committed suicide before their wedding, and King was suspected of being in love with Queen Charlotte, who forced him to kiss her hand in greeting. The couple not only lived together in the same boarding house for years, they were together so often that First Lady Julia Tyler dubbed them "the Siamese twins," a reference to the Siamese twins Chang and Eng, apparently implying that the two were inseparable.
After the move, they wrote numerous letters, dozens of which survive. One King wrote to Buchanan that he wanted to be with the former president, as he was "lonely and forlorn" and that he had "gone to court some gentlemen," which seems to go beyond the mere change in meaning of words over time. Buchanan's presidential aspirations seem to have overwhelmingly overcome this reputation because of how accommodating he was to the slaveholder agenda.
The most significant event of James Buchanan's tenure in office was that the president effectively allowed the Confederate States of America to seize federal forts and arsenals, despite the explicit requests of the commander, General Winfield. Scott . Considering that this effectively armed the southern states at a time when they only had one gun factory and two gunpowder factories, his actions contributed greatly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. In short, he was very fortunate that a large part of his legacy came from the fact that he was able to be gay at a time when it was less socially acceptable.
6. Grover Cleveland and Maria Halpin
Few political careers deserve to endure their scandals less than that of the first Democrat elected to the White House after the Civil War and the only U.S. president to have served two consecutive terms. In 1873, after a months-long courtship, the then 37-year-old Cleveland accompanied Maria Halpin into her bedroom and then had sex with her "using force and violence and without [her] consent."
Cleveland was by no means done ruining Halpin's life: when he learned that he had impregnated her, he had the baby taken from her and taken to the Buffalo Orphan Asylum, and Maria herself locked up in the Providence Insane Asylum. At least she was quickly released when a doctor determined that it had been committed in the first place as an act of flagrant corruption, which, given that this was a time when hysterectomies were still a basic medical procedure For women accused of insanity. It was indeed a narrowly dodged bullet.
When Cleveland’s illegitimate offspring became public knowledge in 1884 after he won the Democratic nomination, the Cleveland campaign launched one of the most illogical forms of damage control in American history. Maria Halpin was portrayed as having sex with multiple potential fathers, and Cleveland was allegedly willing to give up his child to an orphanage because there was so much uncertainty that Oscar Cleveland was even his child. As disgusting as it was, few could deny that it worked.
5. Craig Spence, Ronald Reagan and George Bush
Today, he is largely forgotten, despite being at the center of what was to become the biggest political scandal of the 1980s, short of Iran-Contra. Craig Spence was Republican lobbyist , primarily Japanese business interests in the 1980s. In June 1989, The Washington Times named him as the organizer of a group of men who hired sex workers of questionable age, and claimed that he even took two of them on a night tour of the White House with the help of a secret agent. Member of the service. As if that weren't enough, in August of that year he was arrested for possession of a firearm and cocaine A subsequent investigation implicated several members of the Reagan and Bush administrations in the sex ring.
Although a federal investigation into the case was launched, it ended with astonishing abruptness. Craig Spence, the most famous figure, committed suicide at the Ritz-Carlton in November 1989 The whole thing ended with such an unexpected outcome that the newspaper Washington Post called it "the bomb that didn't explode."
If this sounds suspiciously similar to a figure that was in the news in 2019 and 2021, don't worry; just stay tuned.
4. Tara Reade and Joe Biden
From 1992 to 1993, a woman using the pseudonym Tara Reade worked in the office of then-Senator Joe Biden. One night in 1993, she claims she gave him his sports bag . When they were alone, he allegedly pushed her against a wall and put his hands under her skirt and shirt. When she protested and then stopped him, he allegedly said, "Come on, man, I heard you like me." Reed claimed that despite being angry, he smiled , when I said this.
When the allegations came to light in March 2020, Reed came under intense scrutiny and large-scale attacks . For example, in May 2020 Politico published an article claiming that she would use multiple aliases, using pity to get money from people. In 2012, it was also revealed that she had declared bankruptcy.
Among the most disturbing aspects of the case is a survey of 1,854 respondents conducted Harvard CAPS-Harris Association . It turned out that while 55% believed the allegation, most said it would not affect their votes in this election. Such are the low standards that elected officials are held to, even for the highest positions in the land.
3. Bill Clinton's Many Alleged Victims
Bill Clinton's 1998 affair with Monica Lewinsky is by far the most high-profile of his scandals. If the allegations by a number of other people are true, it is actually one of the president's less serious sexual misdeeds during his two terms. Although the first woman to come to national attention for Clinton's sexual impropriety was his longtime mistress Jennifer Flowers in 1992, his crimes have been part of the public record since 1969. At the time, the 19-year-old Oxford student Eileen Wellstone allegedly filed a complaint that Clinton had assaulted her, but neither she nor her family pressed charges.
In 1998, during Kenneth Starr's investigation into the aforementioned Monica Lewinsky scandal, Kathleen Willey told in the TV program " 60 minutes" , as Clinton groped her in the White House in 1993, when she was a White House volunteer. That same year, her husband committed suicide due to the massive debts he left her in, and she spent many of the following decades struggling financially, so she needed public support to prevent losing her home in 2018 during the aftermath Senate hearings Bretta Kavanaugh .
Also in 1998 Juanita Brodderick also went to "60 minutes" to describe how Clinton assaulted her in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1978 while he was campaigning for governor of Arkansas. She was given the alias "Jane Doe No. 5" during the Paula Jones sexual assault trial against Clinton. The Washington Post reported that reports from the time supported claims that both parties were in the area at the time of the alleged crime. Brodderick claimed that Clinton approached her in 1991 in an attempt to make amends, and she simply told him to go to hell.
If you were more familiar with Clinton's background and your first instinct when you saw the title of this article was that they couldn't all fit in one article, you're right. We'll have to come back to Clinton later.
2. Katie Johnson and Donald Trump
In August 2015, Gawker.com received a tip from a caller who said he was Al Taylor, a former producer Inside Edition . This led to reports that in 1994, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump sexually abused a 13-year-old girl who later adopted the pseudonym Katie Johnson, including forcing her to perform lesbian acts with another minor. April 2016 she will sue the presidential candidate. In June 2016, a video emerged of a pixelated woman in a wig with a modulated voice, where she spoke about her allegations. K October 2016 She will file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing in part that her decision was motivated by a lack of funds and threats of violence.
Surprisingly, the magazine Jezebel reported that the main supporters of these charges against the former president It wasn’t the Democratic Party, but conservative power brokers Steve Baer and his daughter and son-in-law Chandler and Blake Smith. While the most famous sex scandal against Trump was certainly the Hollywood Access tape in October 2016, it was his own party that leveled the most damning allegations against him during the 2016 primaries.
1. The Death of Jeffrey Epstein
Previously convicted of soliciting a child for prostitution in 2008, a charge for which he served 13 months with many work releases, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019, on new charges outlined in a 13-page Manhattan document. It turns out that Epstein had a number of highly suspicious connections to many of the most powerful people in the world, and the victim, who uses the pseudonym Priscilla Doe , claimed that he had a dossier on his accomplices that could be used for blackmail purposes. Consequently, his trial threatened to implicate a number of public figures in his attempts to evade prosecution.
For example, in addition to Trump's aforementioned connection to the Katie Johnson lawsuit, there was his presence in the flight logs of Epstein's jet, nicknamed the "Lolita Express." There are a number of photos and videos of the former president interacting with Epstein, as well as his statements from a 2002 New York magazine profile of Epstein, where he said the billionaire liked women " younger ".
Even more humiliating is that Clinton, who praised Epstein in the same article, flew on the Lolita Express 26 times, and that no Secret Service personnel were listed on five of those flights. His wife also accompanied him on regular visits to Zorro Ranch Epstein's $27.5 million estate in New Mexico. Unlike Epstein's famous temple estate on Little St. James Island off the coast of Florida, this building was so noticeably untouched that in CBS news There was an article dedicated to how suspicious this was.
So it was that when it was announced on August 10, 2019, that Jeffrey Epstein had committed suicide, many people found it impossible to accept at face value. What made it even more suspicious was that his security guards had accidentally fallen asleep at the time despite him being under 24-hour surveillance, the cameras had malfunctioned at the time, and the broken bones in his neck were more likely to be consistent with homicide than suicide, according to experts cited by Washington Post . It became even more suspicious when New York Times reported such bizarre aspects of his imprisonment as the fact that his final phone calls were not recorded, he insisted in interviews that he was not suicidal and would never kill himself because he was a "coward", and that he was incorrectly recorded as black man and is not listed as a sex offender. Frankly, this sounds more like a ridiculous conspiracy theory if you believe that he Not silenced to prevent evidence that at least two former American presidents sexually abused children.
Dustin Koski doesn't have a sex scandal on his record, but if he ever does, it'll probably come through his Twitter .
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